The hotels in South India have decided to observe a day’s bandh on May 30 in a protest as the GST rates declared by the Union Government will cripple the hotel industry and place an unbearable burden on the common man said T Satyanarayana, the general secretary of the AP Hotels’ Association, reported The Hindu.
He along with the other office-bearers of the association said on Saturday that the GST rate on non-AC hotels had been set at 12 per cent while on AC hotels at 18 percent as against the existing 5 per cent.
“Such high rates will drive away the ordinary public from hotels and they will eat at the roadside pushcart vendors. It will become impossible to keep the hotels going,” he said. Nowadays air-conditioning should not be seen as a luxury and such high tax rates were not justified on any account, he added.
Though the association had represented the matter to the Union Government, there was no response. All the hotels in South India would take part in the bandh and urged the people to co-operate with them. The demand of the association was that GST should be pegged at 5 per cent only for all kinds of hotels.
